Newark to DuPont: Clean Up Your Toxins

NEWARK – Newark’s city government has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company left a neighborhood contaminated with toxic chemicals for decades and never cleaned it up, officials announced today.

DuPont Co. and other companies profited off of a former pigment factory plant in the city’s Ironbound neighborhood but also contaminated the land and water near the site, the city said in a statement.

According to the city, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection ordered DuPont to clean up the site of the former Vanderpool Facility, located at 256 Vanderpool Street, more than 30 years ago. Since then, the corporation has done little to remediate the contamination which includes Hexavalent Chromium, lead and arsenic, the city alleges.

Now, the property is an empty “14-acre wasteland,” the city said in a statement.

“After 30 years of broken promises, DuPont Co. and the other corporations who polluted this property have done nearly nothing to clean it up,” Newark mayor Ras Baraka said…

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Campaign Partnership

The Keep Your Promises campaign was developed in partnership with the Action Network Fund, a nonprofit organization that empowers citizens to stand up for their communities and their livelihoods in the face of corporate abuse.